I'm pretty sure I've seen four digits. That was a "lol no".

And what can we do to make the Internet a more safe and privacy friendly place and replace the ad business by something less unpleasant ?

Websites have to pay their bills. Ads, subscriptions or microtransactions; take your pick.

The one way I can think of that would retain the anonymous character of the internet would be HTTP microtransactions by some kind of crypto. Hopefully one of the non-wasteful ones, so not Bitcoin.